


glass houses

by MetaAllu



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: ACCIDENTALLY IN LOOOVE, Angst, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends With Benefits, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Sad Ending, Secret Identity, Unresolved plot, YODELS, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 23:08:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20750285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MetaAllu/pseuds/MetaAllu
Summary: everyone is miserable and horny, and that's all.





	glass houses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ben_jaded](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ben_jaded/gifts).

For @Dekadai1

Oakland, California is like nowhere that Zuri has ever been. It’s loud, louder than even the most bustling cities of Wakanda, with people--dirty and downtrodden--shouting on the streets, calling out to each other, to anyone who will listen, to no one. Everyone always has somewhere to be, rushing more than even the busiest inWakanda. It feels cold, distant, as if they are not all one people, sharing a nation.

Perhaps they are not. They certainly don’t seem to see each other that way. They fling insults at each other, spit at each other, scream at each other from their cars, honk their horns. The yelling, Zuri thinks, is the most unbearable part of it all. They all have such anger and desperation in their voices, needing to be acknowledged or validated or just heard. They never touch, never look each other in the eyes. He has yet to even see lovers holding hands, and it leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

Or perhaps that taste is the pollution. It is dark here, cloudy here. Nature is suppressed, pushed away, forgotten by the wayside like roadkill, and N’jobu has learned to fit right in. Too well, perhaps.

He was supposed to be watching these Americans, not becoming one of them, and certainly the child, the son had been unexpected. N’Jobu was once a proud Wakandan, but he has changed. He is just as loud as them, just as rude as them, and not only in public when he is in a crowd, but in private as well. Even when speaking to his son, he embodies that rude, distrusting, angry attitude about life that so many from Oakland, California seem to possess, spurned as they are by their government and fellow citizens.

As much as Erik is a sweet, energetic boy who embodies the spirit of the gods in his every laugh, he is like forbidden fruit, a boy of two worlds who can never know his true home, nor the true spirit of his father, Prince N’jobu.

He is powerful and energetic, reminding Zuri much of King T’Chaka himself as a child. The resemblance is undeniable, the royal blood running through his veins irrevocable. He is, however, without a doubt an American: he prides himself in victory over his brethren, places heavy importance on masculinity and performances to display it, covets material goods and keeps as many for himself as possible.

Truth be told, Zuri fears for his future, but it is not his place to change it, nor could he do so without upsetting the king, the elders, or the boy’s father. Inaction is his only possible course. Or so he tells himself at night when he is laying on his back and trying with everything inside of him to sleep even with the incessant blaring of car horns and the late night screaming of the alcoholics and drug addicts trawling the streets.

Being a spy is something which Zuri has always done with ease. He has never really liked any of the places that he has been, instead craving his return home, to his own people and his own ways, longing for the day that he can retire from this duty.

He has never really liked any of the people, either. The world outside of Wakanda has a lot of growing to do from the perspective of technology and of social norms.

Zuri had never even imagined someone might despise him purely based on his love for men until he had stepped foot outside of Wakanda. It had been a shocking blow which struck deep in his heart of hearts, leaving behind a permanent wound, a permanent distrust, and an expectation of privacy and discretion.

His skin, too, had proven troublesome in the United States, an experience so absurd and foreign to him that he hadn’t known how to react the first time. He had learned to stick close to his own people after that. Perhaps that was in part responsible for the way that Zuri had lost himself and gotten attached to his charged.

He had kept him at arm’s length while ingraining himself into part of N’Jobu’s routine. It had been easy, something he could practically as if automatically. Yes, it had been easy. Until it hadn’t.

Zuri couldn’t tell you exactly when it was that he first had feelings for N’Jobu because N’Jobu had been shameless in is desires, and that included his desires of the flesh. He had wanted Zuri, he had made his advances, and at the time, it had seemed like a good tactical move to accept and fall into bed with the Wakandan prince.

They hadn’t kissed that first night. Had done nothing but tear each other’s clothes off, paw at each other as they tumbled their way onto N’Jobu’s small, creaky old double bed, shoved up against a wall haphazardly, its purpose little more than somewhere to rest his head at night until now.

Zuri had never done this, but N’Jobu guided him through it, voice rough and encouraging, the over and over litany of “baby” making Zuri’s blood feel as if the gods themselves lived inside of him for the all-too-brief time he spent sheathed inside of N’Jobu’s body, fucking him and listening to his cries.

There was no tenderness. Not that first time.

They had fallen asleep together, tangled in the sheets, and the next morning, Zuri woke to find himself alone in that bed, thighs burning from exertion, back sore from the terrible bed. Still, he had slept poorly the next night, and the one after.

It was only a few days before he found himself nudging N’Jobu back to bed, pulling impatiently at his clothes, assuring him it meant nothing, it was only physical, he felt so good inside. He hadn’t meant a single word of it, could already feel the obsession brewing under his skin, but the longer he lied to N’Jobu about it, the longer he could lie to himself about it.

The first kiss is at two in the morning, lying next to each other on the roof of N’Jobu’s apartment complex, arms touching as they smoke and stare up at the stars as if the answers to all of their troubles are there. Zuri imagines a world in which he can look up at the stars and ask the gods for another outcome, and they would give it to him.

There is no such world.

Bast give him the strength to do what he must. Bast give him the strength to betray this man. Bast takes these feelings away from him now before it is too late.

But Bast does not hear him. Bast does not see him.

N’Jobu turns his head to him.

“Why are you crying, man?”

Zuri can’t think of how to quantify the dread in his gut.

“The world ain’t fair,” he says, instead, and N’Jobu sits up on one forearm, and N’Jobu leans over. He plucks the cigarette from between Zuri’s lips. Zuri puts a hand on the back of his neck and pulls him in. The honking horns, the smells of the city, the chill of the night air: all of it fades to the background as N’Jobu returns his kiss. He drops the smoke and wraps his arm around Zuri’s shoulders instead.

“You wanna go inside?” he asks.

“Yes,” says Zuri.

“You wanna go to bed?” he asks.

“Yes,” says Zuri, and his whole body sings as N’Jobu grabs him by the belt loops and pulls him to his feet.

N’Jobu kisses like his life is ending. He kisses like the combination of all of his mistakes, like the inevitability of the world that is about to come crashing down around him, and that’s how he fucks, too.

His hand loosely around Zuri’s neck, his teeth digging into his own bottom lip as he sits on top of him, thighs trembling from the effort of his own movements. He looks beautiful drenched in sweat and calling out for his gods’ mercy as he takes everything Zuri has to give him.

He looks just as beautiful when he’s angry, which is a thought Zuri doesn’t enjoy having, but he does. He looks gorgeous when he’s screaming, when he slams his hands down on the table and yells at him for doing something reckless, or for not following the plan, or for not calling on time.

He yells, and Zuri yells back, and they fight like two great cats locked in combat. It comes to blows some days, and they end up on the floor with split lips and ruined clothing, staring at each other with such heat and worry that it makes Zuri sick to his stomach.

Every night they go to bed together feels heavier and heavier. Adoration, terror, inevitability. Zuri is drowning in the taste of his mouth, the feeling of their bodies pressed together, his cries of pleasure, the way his nails drag down his back, leaving bloody trails behind as he demands more.

It doesn’t change anything during the daylight hours.

N’Jobu treats him the same as any other gangster treats their right hand man, and when he sends Zuri out to do something dangerous, he leaves no sign that it means anything to him until that night, when he pulls him to bed and kisses him until he’s dizzy and stumbling through the motions, struggling to keep up.

N’Jobu pushes him down, panting hard, one hand planted in the centre of his chest as he works himself open, cock hot and heavy, resting against Zuri’s abdomen. There are tears brimming in his eyes that don’t spill until he’s full up with Zuri’s cock. Sirens wail far down on the streets, the symphony that plays in the background of their low noises, but all Zuri can hear is his name on N’Jobu’s lips: “James, James,  _ James _ .”

Zuri quiets him with kisses, unable to bear the weight of hearing his false name, especially like that. Soon, N’Jobu is reduced to incoherent moans, and Zuri fists a hand around his erection, stroking just how he likes it while he bites along his throat, gasping for breath of his own. He leaves marks on his throat, leaves more on his back, and even as N’Jobu drips tears and blood, he still looks so powerful and god-like that Zuri finds himself filled with awe and worship, and then he finds himself coming, mouth agape, body trembling.

N’Jobu grins at him.

“Good boy,” he whispers.

They fall asleep together, tangled together, and Zuri’s heart is heavy, because he knows what N’Jobu has done. And so does their king.

He told T’Chaka. He betrayed N’Jobu; but is his loyalty not to Wakanda and to his king and to his people? That is what he tells himself, but it doesn’t loosen his tense muscles in the days leading up to the arrival of the king; and it doesn’t undo what has been done. The vibranium is still gone. N’Jobu will still be punished, and Zuri will still return to Wakanda as if he has done nothing wrong, because in the eyes of his kind and his people, he has not.

Those are the only eyes that he should care about. There is something gone wrong inside of him. He has gone too deeply into his cover, let N’Jobu’s reckless spirit inhabit him far too deeply. He considers telling him, considers fleeing with him, but he knows that he can not, that there is no redemption for N’Jobu now.

He watches the other man, their dinner dishes pushed to the corner of the table, N’Jobu’s son gone out of the house to play with his friends. Zuri swallows the lump in his throat.

“Hey,” he says, and N’Jobu looks up.

“I know that tone of voice,” the prince teases. “You know we don’t have time.”

Zuri shakes his head. He leans over and kisses N’Jobu gently as he dares.

“Not that,” he says. “Just this.”

N’Jobu laughs at him, oblivious.

“Whatever, man.”


End file.
